Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Can These Morons Get Anything Right?

I can sometimes understand why troofers have such a hard time dealing with 9/11 related issues, given that they are extremely emotional and complex events. What constantly has me shaking my head though is how they manage to get everything wrong. Oftentimes horribly so. An example from 9/11 Blogger, in a post titled rather bizarrely, Look who Barack Obama is surrounding himself with: people who help to oppress all Americans.

Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education

A strong advocate of George Bush's NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND program which has reduced high school graduation rate to less than 50%, and that's only those who make it into high school, then only 3% of those that graduate go on to higher education, that's roughly 1.2% of children. 98.8% do not make it to higher education. Children are being 'trained', brainwashed to not care, not question, and not learn. Who controls our textbooks?

OK. Well, is this correct? Well, no. The poster is only off by about, uhh... a factor of 25:

The percentage of high school completers1 who enroll in college in the fall immediately after high school reflects the accessibility and perceived value of college education. The immediate college (2- or 4-year) enrollment rate for all high school completers increased between 1972 and 1997 from 49 to 67 percent. Then, the enrollment rate declined to 62 percent by 2001, before rising to 69 percent in 2005.

Incidentally the author also gets the high school graduation rate wrong although by not as much, it is around 70-80%, depending on how you measure it.